Tuesday, December 30, 2014

With nuclear power falling ever further behind renewables as a global energy source, and as the price of oil and gas falls, the future of the industry in 2015 and beyond looks bleak.

Investors are increasingly skeptical about putting their money into nuclear—whereas renewables promise an increasingly rapid return on investment, and may get a further boost if the governments of the world finally take climate change seriously.

Renewables now supply 22 percent of global electricity and nuclear only 11 percent—a share that is gradually falling as old plants close and fewer new ones are commissioned.

New large-scale installations of wind and solar power arrays continue to surge across the world. Countries without full grids and power outages, such as India, increasingly find that wind and solar are quick and easy ways to bring electricity to people who have previously had no supply...

...When I saw “Pandora’s Promise,” I didn’t believe a word of it. I served as a submarine nuclear engineering officer for my four-year stint in the Navy years ago. I qualified as an Engineering Officer of the Watch (a guy who’s in charge of the plant and its other technicians during four-hour shifts) on two different sub reactors. I know the truth about reactors, and the movie replaces it with the demonstrably false Nuclear Dream, a just-so mythical story claiming that nukes are safe, clean and cheap...

Sunday, December 28, 2014

WASHINGTON — Trying to write a complicated formula to cut carbon emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency thinks it has found a magic number: 5.8.

The agency is trying to complete a rule governing carbon emissions from power plants, and among the most complicated and contentious issues is how to treat existing nuclear power plants. Many of them are threatened with shutdowns because cheap natural gas has made their reactors uncompetitive.

The agency’s proposal gave an odd mathematical formula for evaluating nuclear plants’ contribution to carbon emissions. It said that 5.8 percent of existing nuclear capacity was at risk of being shut for financial reasons, and thus for states with nuclear reactors, keeping them running would earn a credit of 5.8 percent toward that state’s carbon reduction goal.

Since receiving tens of thousands of comments on the proposal, the agency is now reviewing the plan. It must evaluate all comments before it sets a final rule, which it hopes to do by June. That rule, however, is likely to be challenged in court...

Tell Secretary of State Kerry: stop blocking new international nuclear safety rules

The U.S. government, led by the State Department, is trying to block a new post-Fukushima nuclear safety approach proposed by European nations from taking effect. Apparently the government fears that U.S. reactors would be required to make upgrades that the nuclear utilities here don't want to pay for. The U.S. ally in this effort? Russia--not exactly a nuclear safety leader!

Rather than working to prevent new nuclear safety rules, the U.S. should both actively welcome them and follow the lead of our European ally Germany in acting to end the use of nuclear power entirely--replacing it with clean energy resources. If Germany, a major industrialized nation, can do it, so can we.

Make your voice count. Sign the petition below; we will deliver it to the State Department and NRC in January, well before a scheduled mid-February international meeting on this issue.

Dr. Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, and nuclear weapons. She has been awarded 21 honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.

This symposium will be unique, linking the existential threat of Artificial Super Intelligence(ASI) with the current existential threat of nuclear war. It will examine a future in which intelligent machines could launch a nuclear war with no human input.

This threat is compounded as the escalating crisis in the Ukraine has significantly increased nuclear risk. According to Dr. Caldicott: “As the Cold War heats up again, the U.S. and Russia each maintain over one thousand nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert to be launched with a press of a button, increasing the risk of a global conflagration.”

“Between them,” she goes on to day, “the U.S. and Russia possess 93% of the world’s 16,400 nuclear weapons arsenal, a situation which is made worse by outdated equipment, negligence, poor maintenance, viruses, and hacking within the arsenals of both countries.”

Far from his past disarmament promises, “President Obama plans to earmark $1 trillion over the next 30 years to replace every nuclear weapon, missile, ship, submarine and plane.”

Thursday, December 11, 2014

California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors are surrounded by earthquake faults they were never designed to withstand. They are riddled with design flaws and can’t meet basic fire safety standards. They dump huge quantities of hot water into the ocean in defiance of state water quality standards, killing billions of sea creatures.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Republicans and the nuclear power sector are hopeful that GOP control of the Senate will improve the political landscape for an industry that hasn’t opened a new generator in nearly two decades.

As Senate Democrats this weekheld their tenth hearing on nuclear safety since Japan’s Fukushima Daichii meltdown three years ago, Republicans and observers looked forward to a future with a more business-friendly approach to the industry.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), long a champion of nuclear power and a critic of environmental rules, is set to become chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees nuclear safety. The committee is also likely to retain nuclear fans like Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.).

“It’ll be clearly a more favorable committee, and there may be some things that we can do” to help the industry," Sessions said...

Thursday, December 4, 2014

The Yucca Mountain site never should have been chosen for permanent disposal of highly radioactive waste. The Department of Energy (DOE) declared the site to be unworkable and it was taken off the table by President Obama in 2010. DOE withdrew the license application but it is still pending.

But the incoming Republican-led Congress could well try to revive the failed project--many members of the House of Representatives have been pushing for that for the past four years.

Yucca Mountain would leak radioactivity because it is plagued by combined risks from earthquakes, volcanic activity, eventual groundwater contamination and air emissions projected to violate the lax regulations that were weakened to accommodate the site. Because of the refusal of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow taxpayer funding for Yucca Mountain, the project has received no money for more than 4 years.

Yucca Mountain has failed as a permanent radioactive waste repository.Here's a new NIRS fact sheet on some of the technical reasons for that failure. It's time to move on.As the Congress now negotiates budget deals, tell your Senators and Representatives below: No Funds For Yucca Mountain Licensing. Notes: You must have a U.S. address to participate in this action. Please use the icons above to share this action page before sending your letter to your Congressmembers. Please feel free to edit the letter to reflect your own concerns.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, December 3, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners will face tough questions from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) over the NRC’s suppression and rejection of a report that cited dangers at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The report, by Diablo Canyon’s former chief inspector Michael Peck, warned that the plant may not be safe from earthquakes.

Sen. Boxer, chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee, called the hearing after revelations surfaced in August that Peck had filed a formal dissent over inaction by the NRC on startling new seismic information. The dissent detailed how the discovery of new faults, unknown when the plant was designed and built more than 40 years ago, casts doubt on whether the plant can withstand shaking from newly identified earthquake faults surrounding the 1960s-era nuclear reactors on California’s Central Coast.

The NRC kept Peck’s dissent secret for more than a year before denying it in September. Expert testimony will also address the seismic report released by PG&E on the same day as the NRC decision, which revealed that faults surrounding Diablo are far larger and interconnected and therefore capable of stronger shaking than the plant was designed to withstand.

What: Environment & Public Works Committee hearingWhere: Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 406, Washington, D.C.When: 10 a.m. EST/ 7 a.m. PST, Wednesday, December 3Webcast: A live webcast can be accessed at that time by clicking the red Live Hearing icon here.

NRC Chair Allison M. Macfarlane, who is leaving her post at the end of this year

Four NRC commissioners

Former California State Senator Sam Blakeslee, a seismologist and former member of the state Seismic Safety Commission, whose district included the plant

Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear safety expert who is a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Yesterday was, in some ways, the culmination of months of NIRS’ work on nuclear power and climate issues, as we showered the Environmental Protection Agency with many thousands of public comments on its proposed Clean Power Plan. That followed months of outreach that resulted in the turnout of many thousands–far more than we had expected–for the Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free Contingent to the People’s Climate March in September.

In general, we support the EPA Plan’s intent–to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. But the Plan fell short in that goal, did not give enough credit nor do enough to promote renewable energy, and, most importantly, provided unwarranted support for aging, uneconomic nuclear reactors already rejected by the marketplace, and which can easily be replaced with cleaner renewables and energy efficiency programs.

In other ways, however, far from a culmination, yesterday seems more like a beginning. Now that we have explained to the EPA, in formats ranging from a paragraph to hundreds of pages of great detail, both the shortcomings of its proposal and how to fix them, we already are turning our attention to what comes next.

That will mean dealing with the Plan as it is actually read when finalized, which is unlikely to be exactly how we have encouraged it to be modified. And that will mean working in the states, with regional, state and local grassroots clean energy organizations to prevent the nuclear power industry from claiming its dirty old reactors and toxic fuel chain are somehow an appropriate solution to the defining environmental problem of our day–the climate crisis. Besides preventing that silliness threatening to be catastrophe, it also means supporting the genuine clean energy technologies that can power our future without carbon emissions and without strontium, cesium, plutonium, tritium, you-name-it emissions as well.

That’s where we’re headed next and that’s where we hope every one of you will be joining us. In the meantime, below is the press release we sent out yesterday about the nuclear power/climate issue and the thousands who made their voices heard to the EPA and which thus was wholeheartedly ignored by the media.

148 ORGANIZATIONS, THOUSANDS OF INDIVIDUALS, WHILE BACKING INTENT OF EPA’S PROPOSED CLEAN POWER PLAN,URGE AGENCY TO REMOVE SUPPORT FOR DIRTY NUCLEAR POWER AND INSTEAD ENCOURAGE CLEAN ENERGY

While supporting the general intent of the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan to address our climate crisis, 148 organizations—representing millions of Americans–today submitted comments to the agency urging it to reconsider and remove its unwarranted support for nuclear power in the plan...

Monday, December 1, 2014

The Saskatchewan government and nuclear industry – with public and corporate money “laundered” through the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) – plan to build a small nuclear reactor to power extraction of oil from the Alberta Tar Sands.

When elected in 2007, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall (his Saskatchewan Party is ideologically tied to Harper’s federal Conservatives) created the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), chaired by one of the U of S vice-presidents. With industry support from Bruce Power (nuclear reactors) and its majority shareholders, Cameco (uranium mining) and TransCanada Corporation (the Keystone pipeline), the UDP pushed to establish a nuclear program at the University.

Public consultations in 2009 gave a resounding 88% “NO” to this nuclear agenda , but the government/corporate/university consortium have used the U of S to bypass this overwhelming expression of public opinion. The Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) was announced in March 2011 with $30 million of Government funding over 7 years. Its first goal is to build a prototype small nuclear reactor on campus. In August 2011 the Government and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd announced another $10 million towards that objective.

Current U of S President MacKinnon and Board of Governors Chair Nancy Hopkins have been deeply involved in this project. Hopkins owns nearly $2 million in Cameco investments and is a paid Cameco director ($175,872 in 2009). MacKinnon accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Cameco’s northern operations and exclusive lodge in 2009, at the peak of the public debate about the UDP report.

But MacKinnon retires from the U of S on June 30. We must send a clear message to his successor, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, to step off this destructive path.

Brad Wall’s government has starved the University of essential funding – U of S has an accumulated $90 million debt. Existing infrastructure is crumbling. New buildings on campus can’t open. And the $40 million for the CCNI and related nuclear projects won’t help U of S out of this crisis.

The University of Saskatchewan, founded in 1907, was once proudly called “the people’s university” – set in the heartland of the Canadian cooperative movement, home to Tommy Douglas, the greatest Canadian, the father of Medicare. Today the University has become an easy target for corporate takeover and a tool for the nuclear and petroleum industries. But right now we have a chance to stop this from happening.

1205 rework opposite!Netuyocult Abe Liberal Democratic Party to suspicions the Prime Minister's Office before protest nuclear power the fierce protests raging!Re: 12/5/2014 (money) 18:00-20:00 appointment place: before the Prime Minister's official residence and Nagata-Cho, at Kasumigaseki 1 zone (kokkai-gijidomae station, Kasumigaseki, Toranomon station, sakuradamon station take a) call: Metropolitan anti-nuclear Association, Downing Street before protest area basically, 18:30, 19:00, 19:00 past the protest speech time and 19:30 free Maik （ can speech might not want to face reflected on the spot.Relationship on the radio where the Parliament building front until the station number 3 exit ） of there time. • Precautions [important! : 12 / 2 (fire) House of representatives election was gazetted as "1205 rework opposite!Prime Minister's official residence before protest ' of protest speeches, especially Please note the following points.Election speeches related to the election and calls are not on the law.-Ballot requests to a particular candidate, political party, cannot call for support.-Can't use terms such as "election" and "vote" election. And also go to vote please refrain. （ "00 party promote nuclear power are not allowed! "The introduction of the policies of the political parties and criticism can be freely. "12/14 so no nuclear power plant in our selection. Change the politics ', such as the is OK.） not related to the theme of anti-nuclear power, nuclear and certain political themes concerning flags and banners, placards, please.For http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?p=789 * site is crowded with → click here for more information in protest after 20:00 please, distribute leaflets or collecting signatures. * This Prime Minister's official residence before protests are, one last call as a non-violent direct action.Fully understanding its purpose will join us to thank.* And other basic instructions of the organizers to follow you will first note that please.* About speeches please our.And thank you within one minute per person.-Please do not is not related to the anti-nuclear and nuclear theme speeches. And please refrain from speech lead to groups of specific appeal.As a personal thank you appeal. And may be asked to stop if the contents does not address the intention of the organizers determined.Please be forewarned.▼ about contact news media relations Dear customer / coverage coverage inquiries to the following please. Press@coalitionagainstnukes.jp http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?p=4142

Saturday, November 29, 2014

via Marcia Gomes de Oliveira (Uranium Film Festival) – To support the Stand Against Uranium March of the Cree, Cariocas will march now, Sunday, Nov.30, along Rio´s Copacabana beach. Start at 10 am, at Posto 6, last Fishermen community of Copacabana. Join us, if you can!

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Nuclear power constitutes the world’s most subsidy-fattened energy industry, yet it faces an increasingly uncertain future. The global nuclear power industry has enjoyed growing state subsidies over the years, even as it generates the most dangerous wastes whose safe disposal saddles future generations.

Despite the fat subsidies, new developments are highlighting the nuclear power industry’s growing travails. For example, France — the “poster child” of atomic power — is rethinking its love affair with nuclear energy. Its parliament voted last month to cut the country’s nuclear-generating capacity by a third by 2025 and focus instead on renewable sources by emulating neighboring countries like Germany and Spain.

As nuclear power becomes increasingly uneconomical at home because of skyrocketing costs, the U.S. and France are aggressively pushing exports, not just to India and China, but also to “nuclear newcomers,” such as the cash-laden oil sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. Such exports raise new challenges related to freshwater resources, nuclear safety and nuclear-weapons proliferation.

Still, the bulk of the reactors under construction or planned worldwide are in just four countries — China, Russia, South Korea and India...

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Cree march to demand ban on uranium exploration | Montreal Gazette
– Seven young members of the James Bay Cree Nation began an 800-kilometre trek from Mistissini to Montreal Sunday to demand a ban on uranium development in northern Quebec.

“We want a uranium-free Eeyou Istchee (Cree territory), ” said Youth Grand Chief Joshua Iserhoff, 36, who set out with six others at 11 a.m. in minus-2-degree weather.

They plan to arrive in Montreal on Dec. 15, the final day of hearings on uranium development by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE).

The march underlines the Crees’ opposition to uranium exploration and mining, which they say would encroach on traplines, poison the environment and threaten their traditional way of life.

“It’s not just an issue for the First Nations but for Quebecers, too,” said Iserhoff, who launched an invitation to other marchers to join the walk at any point along the route to Montreal, via Chibougamau, the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region and Quebec City.

“Not only do we want to do this for our people but we want to save other natural resources from ever being contaminated and destroyed by uranium,” he said.

The BAPE started holding hearings on uranium development across the province in May and is scheduled to submit its recommendations to Environment Minister David Heurtel by next May.

Quebec has declared a moratorium on uranium projects pending the outcome of the BAPE hearings.

In 2013, Yves-François Blanchet, then environment minister in the Parti Québécois government, said no permits would be issued for the exploration or mining of uranium until an independent study on the mineral’s social acceptability and environmental impacts had been completed.

At that time, the only uranium project seeking an exploration permit was Strateco Resources Inc.’s Matoush site in the Otish mountains, about 275 kilometres north of Chibougamau.

Strateco, based in Boucherville, has invested $125 million on the project.

Stretco stocks plunged by more than 60 per cent in April 2013 after the government halted exploration.

The company said it had obtained authorizations from the federal government and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, in addition to 22 permits from Quebec to advance the project.

After following the first two phases of the BAPE process, the Cree Nation is convinced, now more than ever, of the significant long-term risks that uranium development would bring to our land.” — Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come

“After following the first two phases of the BAPE process, the Cree Nation is convinced, now more than ever, of the significant long-term risks that uranium development would bring to our land,” Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come said on Nov. 14.

“We are not prepared to impose such burdens on our future generations,” he added.

Environmental groups have tabled 1,500 briefs opposing uranium development before the BAPE and launched an online campaign, www.quebecsansuranium.org.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Helen Caldicott, the pioneering Australian antinuclear activist and pediatrician who spearheaded the global nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s and co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has joined with left-leaning environmental groups here in an uphill fight to halt nuclear power as a "solution" to the global warming crisis. "Global warming is the greatest gift the nuclear industry has ever received," Dr. Caldicott told Truthout.

The growing rush to nuclear power was only enhanced, experts say, by the weak climate deal at the Copenhagen 15 climate conference. The prospects for passage of a climate bill in Congress - virtually all versions are pro-nuclear - were enhanced, most analysts say, because it offered the promise that China might voluntarily agree to verify its carbon reductions and it could reassure senators worried about American manufacturers being undermined by polluters overseas. But at the two-week international confab that didn't produce any binding agreements to do anything, Caldicott and environmental activist groups were marginalized or, in the case of the delegates from Friends of the Earth, evicted from the main hall.

The upshot of the latest trends boosting nuclear power - although no nuclear reactor has been built in America since the 1970s - are indeed grim, she said. "Nothing's going to work to stop them but a meltdown," she said, fearing the prospects of such a calamity. "I don't know how else the world is going to wake up."

Her fears may sound apocalyptic, but as Truthout will explore in more depth in part II of this article, the dangers of a meltdown, terrorist attack and radiation damage are far greater than commonly known. That's because of what federal and Congressional investigators, advocacy groups and medical researchers say is a culture of sloppy security, health and safety oversight by a cozily pro-industry Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (An NRC spokesman denied those allegations in a written statement to Truthout.) The quasi-independent agency is funded primarily by fees from nuclear power plants. On top of all that, the Obama administration is planning to offer about $20 billion in loan guarantees to fund two new uncertified and risky reactors designs that have faced safety and cost overrun problems overseas...

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Einstein said,
"The splitting
of the atom
changed everything
save man's mode
of thinking;
thus we drift towards
unparalleled catastrophe."
He also said,
"Nuclear power is a hell of a way
to boil water!"

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